For Normals, Jobs' "Retina Display" Claim May Be Fair After All 386
The Bad Astronomer writes "AT WWDC, Steve Jobs claimed that the iPhone 4's display has about the same resolution as the human eye — held at one foot away, the iPhone 4's pixels are too small to see. After reading an earlier Slashdot post about an expert disputing Jobs' claim, I decided to run the numbers myself. I found that Jobs is correct for people with normal vision, and the expert was using numbers for theoretically perfect vision. So to most people, the iPhone 4 display will look unpixellated."
retina display (Score:5, Insightful)
What bugs me is when a company uses a name for something that doesn't make sense.
When I hear "retina display" I think what you are talking about is a system that projects an image into my retina.
Call to action (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me make this clear: if you have perfect eyesight, then at one foot away the iPhone 4’s pixels are resolved. The picture will look pixellated. If you have average eyesight, the picture will look just fine.
Beer!
Re:Wrong or right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wrong or right (Score:2, Insightful)
I dunno, the average joe wouldn't know what the hell Jobs was talking about.
Print Resolution (Score:5, Insightful)
But, yes, anyone who claims that Apple was lying about it being a "retinal" display is simply attempting to pick a needless fight. Ignore them and move on.
One in the eye for the haters. (Score:4, Insightful)
There's one in the eye for all the haters on the previous story who just took the random guy off the internet's word for it that Apple was wrong.
Re:Wrong or right (Score:3, Insightful)
Again though, why the use of meaningless words? Couldn't he have just said "the resolution/DPI is so dense that your eyes won't be able to distinguish individual pixels"? What, does the average Apple customer really seek the need of some special word to wrap up the device's capabilities in? And if they do, what does that say about their average customer?
I think it's insulting to the people that buy Apple's products, regardless of whether people seek it out or not.
Re:Wrong or right (Score:1, Insightful)
In what way is "retina" a special word? Are you some kind of retard?
And I can just imagine the marketing division that would go up to the CEO of any company and say "You know what you should say in the big keynote speech? The resolution or dots per inch on this cellphone is so dense that one will not be able to distinguish one pixel from its neighbouring pixels. They'd all get sacked, and rightly so.
Re:Wrong or right (Score:5, Insightful)
"Retina Display"(TM).
Re:Wrong or right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:retina display (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Anti-Aliasing (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just a marketing name, for crap's sake (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not _projecting onto ones retina_ any more than another LCD screen is.
But you see, they all do that. All visible objects do that. That's how our eyes work. Light reflected or emitted from objects uses the lens in your eye to project an image onto your retina. It is technically correct, and no, it's not anything special, other than being a high resolution display.
Could it be, that this is just a trade name? (and that perhaps some people have a little too much time on their hands?)
When I search for a document on my Mac, I don't expect an actual Spotlight to shine on the document.
When I restore a file from a backup using Time Machine, I don't imagine that there's actual time travel taking place.
If I use the feature that shows all of my overlapping windows resized so they fit on the screen and I can choose which one to work on, I don't expect the crew from 20/20 or 60 Minutes or Dateline NBC to show up and do an actual Exposé.
Holy crap, I just found out there's no control tower or runway involved in using Airport networking! What a complete and total fraud!
MobileMe doesn't actually cause me to move around either!
And, worst of all, the damned Magic Mouse doesn't have any magical powers! I just tried to cast a Patronus Charm with it, just like in those Harry Potter movies, and the damn thing didn't work at all. It doesn't even fly around unless you throw it. I want my money back!
Re:Wrong or right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Print Resolution (Score:4, Insightful)
But, yes, anyone who claims that Apple was lying about it being a "retinal" display is simply attempting to pick a needless fight. Ignore them and move on.
Hm, maybe. It's certainly legitimate to object to the ill-chosen, ad hoc terminology that clashes with the existing meaning of the phrase. It's also legitimate to quibble over the enormous amount of wiggle room in the definition. Apple wasn't lying, but they were making claims without a great deal of actual substance. People get fed up with Apple's constant hyperbole, especially when the product in question is, in the end, a PDA with a larger than usual screen.
That said, no one disputes that the iPad will be a great new platform for graphic designers and the advertisers who employ them.
Re:Wrong or right (Score:3, Insightful)
"the resolution/DPI is so dense that your eyes won't be able to distinguish individual pixels"
These are the words the average person does not understand:
-resolution
-DPI
-pixels
These are the words the average person isn't sure about:
-dense
-distinguish
-individual
That leaves the description as:
"the is so that your eyes won't be able to"
I think Steve will stick with Retina Display
Just as meaningless as your suggestion but 80% shorter, and it has marketing zing.
Re:Wrong or right (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is this a hard thing to suss out? Branding sells to the uninformed, or willingly ignorant.
A normal person who just wants a kickass phone doesn't want to compare DPI or arcmin numbers, they want to see a colorful badge and a swanky trademark along with something that is obviously better than the competing device next to it, whether they know it or not.
Calling something a mouthful of numbers and acronyms, such as "a 326 DPI LCD panel", isn't going to get nearly the consumer attention as a "Retina Display" will.
Re:Wrong or right (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this speaks poorly of the general public
The general public doesn't give a damn about DPI numbers, nor should they. They care about something that gives them value for their dollars, and marketing is all about conveying the value.
Very well said (Score:2, Insightful)
Excellent point, and as a corollary to that it's worth noting that the plethora of Android devices are available on all of the Big Four networks, while iPhone continues to be available only on AT&T. It says something about the popularity of the iPhone that it's available only on arguably the worst of the major networks yet is stll No. 2 behind only Blackberry.
Much has been made of the fact that the Android platform outsold the iPhone in the 1st Quarter, but the Apple-haters crowing that this somehow signals the ascendancy of Android and the end for the iPhone's supremacy are bound to be bitterly disappointed when the iPhone becomes available on othe networks. Not "if", "when". The general consensus is that it will be available on Verizon sometime in 2011, and according to Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros., it may be on T-Mobile as early as fall of this year. In my opinion, the rapid sales of Android devices have as much to do with Verizon's aggressive promotion, as well as the reluctance of people to switch from their existing providers to AT&T, as the merits of the platform itself. That calculus will change dramatically when the iPhone throws off the AT&T shackles. Android outselling iPhone in the 1st Quarter of 2010 may well come to be looked on as an anomaly
Re:Correction (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Jumbotron (Score:4, Insightful)
I heard the other day that the jumbotron at the new cowboy stadium is a retina display.... from a distance of 27 miles.
Which kind of proves the point. It's not one at the distance it's meant to be used.
This seems to be an arbitrary way of claiming that your screen is better than everyone else's.
No more or less arbitrary than any other way.
t's nice, but it isn't revolutionary outside of the iWorld.
It IS revolutionary, and unless Apple helped develop or fund it, it's got nothing to do with "iWorld".
It's only a little bit denser than other phone displays that have been around for months.
66 ppi isn't a "little bit denser". It's a 25% increase, which is huge for a mature technology. At this size, nothing even close to this density has yet been achieved.
When you look at IPS displays, nothing even approaching 200 ppi has been marketed before.
In either case, it's a massive technological achievement in an industry you clearly don't understand.
Will someone please tell me how that isn't false advertising?
Because it wasn't advertising. There was no representation that any device was being used, but only that the effect of higher density was being demonstrated, which is hard to do on a single fixed-resolution projector. And it wasn't anywhere near 50x greater. The type example was about 4-5x greater density.
The actual grid examples, as well as the demos of the actual product were accurate.
Re:So It's catching my droid then? (Score:1, Insightful)
We're not talking about distinguishing pixels in arbitrary display images, least of all anti-aliased fonts (whose very point is to conceal pixelation).
We're talking about optical resolution here, so load some 1px pitch black/white patterns (e.g. http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/sharpness.php [lagom.nl]) and see at what distance you see gray instead of lines/checks/whatever.
Re:Correction (Score:1, Insightful)
ZOMG! (Score:2, Insightful)
A consumer products manufacturer makes a slightly exaggerated claim about the specs on one of it's new models! Stop the presses! Film at 11!
I mean, really, what's the big deal? Stuff like this goes on all the time and people just laugh it off. Here on Slashdot, however, there have been hundreds of posts over the last two days about it. To quote William Shatner: Get a life!
Re:math failure (Score:1, Insightful)
20/20 is normal. That is a standard. Are there people, that for whatever reason, have better then 20/20 in some/all circumstances? Yes. They are not the defined normal. For 20/20, 300 dpi is a denser resolution then the eye can resolve at 12 inches. This is the claim that Apple is making, or at least implying. This is precisely what the article was saying but with more words.
The article is correct. Redefining normal is not allowed. Unless you're Microsoft, in that case carry on but I expect a vision# api at some point in the future.
Re:math failure (Score:2, Insightful)
math fail to you, too
Some people can see magnitudes smaller arcmin than .6 up close
up close? The angle is constant for all distances.
I think Jobs was justified in saying what he did as long as the average person can't distinguish the pixels
Re:Print Resolution (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't that just a long winded way of saying "well, you were right on your claims after all, but I'm still going to hold it against you rather than admit that I was wrong in my rush to judgment."
Rubbish (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if your argument were factually correct, which it is not, exercising a modicum of common sense would explain that it is AT&T who gain from exclusivity, not Apple. When Apple, approached the carriers with the iPhone, AT&T were the only ones who did not point blank reject Apple's demand that the device not carry the network logo, as well as crippling the phone with their network's "features" and burying it in shovelware. AT&T demanded exclusive rights for five years in return for agreeing to Apple's terms.
Remember that no one could have predicted that the device would become a runaway smash hit, and AT&T were in the driver's seat; they were the only option left to Apple after the other networks had rejected Apple's terms. Jobs demanded a percentage of iPhone data revenues in return for exclusivity, to help offset lost opportunities with other carriers. This was a no-brainer for AT&T. If iPhone failed, no big deal, they sell a hell of a lot of different devices, and if only a tiny fraction of their customers used the iPhone, giving Apple a cut of iPhone data revenues would have a minimal impact on their bottom line.
Except...the iPhone succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. It brought AT&T millions of new customers, and data traffic spiked, bringing the network to its knees. AT&T made money hand over fist off their exclusivity deal, attracting new customers and retaining them despite their shitty service. Case in point, a friend of mine in Seattle who switched from Verizon to AT&T in February just to get an iPhone. She had wanted to trade her BlackBerry Curve for a touchscreen smartphone, and the only thing Verizon had at the time was the Storm. She loathed it, and whenever we spoke she'd complain bitterly about it. When she called me a couple months ago just to tell me how much she loved her iPhone, AT&T dropped the call three times in fifteen minutes. When I redialed her for the third time and asked her how the hell she could put up with such awful service, she said that the iPhone was such a joy for her to use that she was willing to tolerate it, but said she'd jump back to Verizon in a New York minute if they got the device. In fact, her enthusiasm for the iPhone was such that she said she was considering getting her first Mac, which couldn't have gone over too well at home; her husband works for Microsoft. And just to forestall the argument that iPhone users are sheep, yes, she is a non-technical user, but far from stupid; she's an emergency room physician, and a damned good one too. It never fails to amuse me when smug, elitist techies describe users of Apple products as smug and elitist.
To suggest that Apple were the ones who demanded exclusivity is laughable, and that they did so out of greed, is simply irrational. Why the hell would they willingly restrict their own potential sales? You sound like just another anti-Apple jihadist, willing to distort facts in any way you can to demonstrate that Apple is "evil".
Re:Close to the End of the Line (Score:2, Insightful)
You're a fool, just because you don't get a movie reference doesn't mean you should call someone a fool.
And I understand all of the things you're talking about, your post just made no sense.
You're suggesting that 80 Hz, 16777216 colors, and shitty resolution are enough.
You talk about the "colorspace" of the eye, the "color resolution" of 24-bit color, and completely ignore the color space of the displays themselves. (Words have meanings, try to get them right.)
You completely ignore (or are oblivious to) the fact that much press work is done in 36- or 48-bit color for a reason.
You don't understand the fact that the signaling rate over the optic nerve has ZERO connection to the timing of a display refresh.
You suggest creating non-uniform pixels because it will get us "off the grid". You suggest driving and refreshing each pixel individually because it will get us "off the grid".
Your suggestions offer zero advantages and add orders of magnitude more complexity.
You're a moron.
Re:Print Resolution (Score:4, Insightful)
People are too hung up on PPI without factoring the distance into the equation. The same can be said for the people who can't see the difference between 720p and 1080p on their TVs. These are usually people with big lounge rooms and significant others who won't let them move the couch or the TV into the middle of the room and thus must watch it from 5m away.
Re:Rubbish (Score:3, Insightful)